Are babies born with left-hemisphere language dominance? An fNIRS study.

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Are babies born with left-hemisphere language dominance? An fNIRS study. Phetsamone Vannasing1*, Anne Gallagher1, Natacha Paquette1, Julie Tremblay1, Olivia Florea1, Dima Safi1, Renée Béland1, Franco Lepore2 and Maryse Lassonde1 1 CHU Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre, Research Center, Canada 2 Neuropsychology and Cognition Research Center, Psychology, Canada The age at which babies start showing a left hemisphere functional specialization for language remains a matter of controversy. Do newborns already show a hemispheric specialization for language discrimination? Twenty-seven one-day-old infants from francophone parents in Quebec underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to assess whether the neonate brain shows left hemisphere dominance for native language. Fourteen full-term newborns (7 boys, 7 girls) listened to a story read in the language spoken at home (French) and in a foreign language (Arabic). All readings (forward speech conditions) were done by the same speaker. To determine if hemispheric dominance reflects the use of prosodic cues, a second group of 13 full-term newborns (8 boys, 5 girls) were tested with the same utterances played backwards (backward speech conditions). A nonparametric permutation test was applied to find the time points (0 to 30 s) that would show significant differences between the left and right temporal regions for each of the forward and backward speech conditions. Results revealed significantly higher oxyhemoglobin (HbO2) concentration in the left than in the right temporal region when neonates were hearing the story in the French forward condition (p = 0.001). Both forward Arabic and backward French elicited a significantly higher right hemisphere activation (p = 0.007 and p = 0.025, respectively) whereas the backward Arabic condition elicited a bilateral activation (right hemisphere = .0005 mol/L, left hemisphere = .0004 mol/L). We interpreted that within the first few hours after birth, newborns of French speaking parents showed left hemisphere dominance in processing prosodic cues that are language specific. These results confirmed that hemispheric specialization for language and prosodic processing is present at birth. Keywords: Language, development, newborns, Prosody, Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Language Citation: Vannasing P, Gallagher A, Paquette N, Tremblay J, Florea O, Safi D, Béland R, Lepore F and Lassonde M (2015). Are babies born with left-hemisphere language dominance? An fNIRS study.. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00312 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Mrs. Phetsamone Vannasing, CHU Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre, Research Center, Montreal, Canada, pvannasing@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Phetsamone Vannasing Anne Gallagher Natacha Paquette Julie Tremblay Olivia Florea Dima Safi Renée Béland Franco Lepore Maryse Lassonde Google Phetsamone Vannasing Anne Gallagher Natacha Paquette Julie Tremblay Olivia Florea Dima Safi Renée Béland Franco Lepore Maryse Lassonde Google Scholar Phetsamone Vannasing Anne Gallagher Natacha Paquette Julie Tremblay Olivia Florea Dima Safi Renée Béland Franco Lepore Maryse Lassonde PubMed Phetsamone Vannasing Anne Gallagher Natacha Paquette Julie Tremblay Olivia Florea Dima Safi Renée Béland Franco Lepore Maryse Lassonde Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.